Brandeis SciFest 2025: a celebration of pupil analysis and scientific innovation
By Julian Cardillo ’14
Images by Gaelen Morse
August 12, 2025
Together with touchdown probably the most prestigious prizes and making cutting-edge discoveries, Brandeis scientists are additionally deeply invested in pupil research — a dedication celebrated yearly at SciFest.
Annually, undergraduates spend over two months immersed in school labs, collaborating with professors, graduate college students and friends earlier than presenting their findings at this extremely anticipated custom, first held in 2011. This 12 months’s occasion featured 96 college students presenting their analysis at a poster session within the Shapiro Science Middle, the place they defined their findings with guests from throughout the Brandeis campus.
Jacob Hillemann ’26, a chemistry main from Burlington, Vermont, modeled the manufacturing of pink mud, a hazardous industrial waste created throughout aluminum extraction. His analysis estimated that the U.S. produces about 600,000 tons of dry pink mud yearly, highlighting each the environmental dangers and potential useful resource worth ensuing from the waste.
Hillemann needs to pursue a profession in local weather change mitigation, combining his passions for each environmental research and chemistry.
“I believe it’s superior that Brandeis presents so many high-level analysis alternatives for undergrads,” Hillemann stated. “That’s one of many causes I got here right here, as a result of that’s not the case at most different faculties. In truth, you sometimes can’t do that analysis till a lot additional in your profession. It’s totally different at Brandeis.”
Sophia Fredberg ’26, a neuroscience and biology double main from Boston, studied how a little-known protein known as IQG1 helps yeast cells divide. Fredberg performed her analysis in collaboration with biology professor Bruce Goode.
Fredberg discovered that altering a small part of the protein disrupts the cell’s inner “railroad tracks,” affecting progress, cell form and the transport of important supplies — insights that would reveal new particulars about how related proteins work in additional advanced organisms.
“I’m so grateful for the mentorship alternatives within the sciences right here, particularly in Dr. Goode’s lab,” Fredberg stated. “He places a whole lot of effort and time into ensuring that his undergrads are capable of have a mentor who stays with them by means of commencement. It’s so useful.”
Joshua Vorchheimer ’27, a biophysics main from New York Metropolis, examined mobile fusion — a course of vital in muscle progress, the placental improvement and a few viral infections.
By observing fused cells beneath totally different situations, he discovered their form and construction change relying on how a lot surrounding tissue is current and the way lengthy they’ve been fused, providing clues to how this course of works in well being and illness.
Vorchheimer, who hopes to pursue a profession in inner medication, says analysis expertise is important for growing the appropriate mindset to actually perceive the human physique and assist sufferers.
“I believe that doing analysis is without doubt one of the greatest issues for growing a scientific thoughts,” he stated. “It lets you not simply learn a scientific paper and settle for it, however to know what went into it — the strategies, the method — and that’s important to understanding the human physique and the way we will repair it and assist individuals.”
In the meantime, biology majors Uyen Bui ’26 from Ho Chi Minh Metropolis, Vietnam, and Julian Gersh ’25 from New Jersey, collaborated on a mission to check viruses known as phages that may infect pseudomonas fluorescens, a bacterium extensively utilized in evolutionary analysis.
They recognized a various set of phages able to infecting a pressure that carries a protein known as gasmin — linked to programmed cell loss of life within the immune system — and located putting variation within the phages’ shapes and make-up.
“Our lab offers us a whole lot of freedom,” Bui stated. “They actually belief us to work on the issues we need to work on, to discover the issues we care about, and to transcend simply concepts. This type of alternative is admittedly unbelievable.”
Shaian Aghasoltan ’26, a psychology main from Worcester, Massachusetts working in professor Anne Berry’s lab, studied growing old within the mind and its connection to Alzheimer’s illness utilizing superior mind imaging methods.
His analysis discovered that adjustments in sure mind chemical substances correlate with motor perform decline and dopamine manufacturing, shedding mild on how metabolic stress may affect neurodegeneration.
“This entire summer time I acquired to receives a commission to come back right here to Brandeis day by day and stay right here on campus, and none of that will have been potential with out this analysis alternative,” stated Aghasoltan, who hopes to pursue a PhD in neuroscience. “With the ability to get this analysis expertise and use all my expertise has been actually vital to me.”
